The present invention relates to vehicle side view mirrors. More particularly, the present invention relates to a side view mirror assembly with interchangeable appearance covers, generally shown at 10 in the drawings.
The style, features and functions of vehicle side view mirrors have become increasingly important to both manufacturers and consumers in today's automotive and vehicle market. Typically, in the past, vehicle mirrors and features therein are designed for a particular model, with little, if any, interchangeability of parts.
A particular mirror design is designed specifically for a particular application with both mechanical features, such as a manually adjustable mirror or an electrically adjustable mirror, and stylistic design considerations being created for a single specific design. While these mirrors have been adequate, they require a separate manufacture for each type of design, whether foldable, manually adjustable or electrically adjustable or the like. Therefore, design changes either stylistically or feature-wise are hard to accomplish in a timely manner.
Thus, in the past, typically stylistic changes require entire rebuilds of the internal component and framework, along with the external stylistic changes. Therefore, it has been desirable to provide a system which will allow interchangeability of aesthetic features and various options. Preferably, the system would include a generic mirror control module over which various stylistic covers could be fitted to provide different stylistic looks to the mirror assembly.